Electronics packages, such as integrated circuit packages can include a voltage regulator to maintain voltages used by components in an electronic device or system at proper values. The voltage regulator includes such components as inductors and/or capacitors. For example, voltage regulators (VRs) can be used in the circuit packages to reduce or increase the voltage of a power supply to an operating voltage of the integrated circuit package.
Voltage regulators are often designed to operate within specific parameters, such as output voltage ripple, overshoot voltages, efficiency, power overhead and input power delivery network (PDN) impedance. For some types of voltage regulators, avoiding design impacts on these parameters may pose a challenge given a demand for smaller and smaller integrated circuit packages. For example, output voltage ripple, overshoot voltages and PDN impedance have grown due to limited on-die capacitance reduction and load transients have increased to support competitive processor core performance.
Voltage ripple is currently mitigated either via large inductors that take up valuable space on the electronics package and additionally cause poor transient load performance. Alternatively, voltage ripple can be mitigated via re-partitioning at a full chip level. Voltage overshoot mitigation generally requires lower inductance and/or complex active clamp circuitry to limit maximum voltage seen by load. These current mitigation measures and other factors add complexity and cost to electronic device design and fabrication.